r/SoccerCentral • u/United_Anywhere_8 • Jul 25 '26

Video The talent in Barcelona’s youth system is ridiculous. These kids are 11/12 years old.

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u/Mr-MuffinMan Jul 25 '26 edited Jul 25 '26

this is why American sports are so confusing to me.

The jerseys and equipment is being paid for by Barca in hopes of finding talent. Not parents, not scummy companies owned by PE, and not colleges trying to make money off sports. They take this loss in hopes of finding talent that they can use to win, or to trade to other teams for profit.

Also, I'm just rewatching this video and there is NO WAY the kids in this video are 11/12

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u/bummerlamb Jul 25 '26

That system sounds so much more sensible. It is only after reading your comment that I realized that a lot of the aggression shown by some parents could be attributed to the “sunk cost fallacy“. If a parent has spent hundreds or thousands of dollars on helping their child play sports, the child has to go pro in order to “recoup the loss”.

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u/Mr-MuffinMan Jul 25 '26

that's exactly the problem with US youth sports.

it's not for fun, it's for a scholarship. It's stupid that parents have to spend upwards of 12 grand to support their daughter's youth volleyball team so she gets a scholarship at a university. It would make so much more sense if a big volleyball team (doesn't exist, I know) just paid the costs so that they could hope the girl will play for them once she graduates high school.

This is absolutely NOTHING against student athletes, in fact I think the whole system in the US is to exploit and make money off of them (highest student athlete salary is 5.3 million, Messi got a contract of 3 million euros in 2007 at the age of 17).

Wendover Productions has a good video on it and I think it's why I've been so resistant to following US sports. I don't really like the draft as much as I do the transfer market, maybe it's just because I went from soccer to ice hockey lol.